Background
LeRoy R. Hafen was born on December 8, 1893 in Bunkerville, Nevada. He was the son of John George and Mary Ann (Stucki) Hafen.
Provo, UT 84602, United States
Hafen received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1916 from Brigham Young University.
201 Presidents' Cir, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, United States
Hafen received his Master of Arts degree in 1919 from the University of Utah.
Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
Hafen received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1924 from the University of California.
LeRoy R. Hafen was born on December 8, 1893 in Bunkerville, Nevada. He was the son of John George and Mary Ann (Stucki) Hafen.
Hafen received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1916 from Brigham Young University, his Master of Arts degree in 1919 from the University of Utah, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1924 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Later in life, Hafen received honorary Litt.D. degrees from the University of Colorado and the University of Zurich.
LeRoy Hafen began his career as a high school teacher of history, then principal, in Bunkerville in 1916-1920. He was a private school teacher in Berkeley. He served as executive director and state historian for the State Historical Society of Colorado from 1924 to 1954. During his tenure there he also taught at the University of Denver, first as an associate professor, then as a full professor.
In 1954, LeRoy became a full professor of history at Brigham Young University in Provo, retaining this position until his retirement in 1971. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Glasgow.
His first book was The Overland Mail, 1849-1869, which was published in 1926. He wrote or edited over thirty books over his lifetime, many of them with his wife, Ann Woodbury Hafen. All covered some aspects of history of the West, and many were popular enough to be reprinted, including Broken Hand: The Life Story of Thomas Fitzpatrick, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890, Pike’s Peak Gold Rush Guidebooks of 1859, Colorado: A Story of the State and Its People, Ruxton of the Rockies, and Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles.
By far his most ambitious project was The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, a ten-volume logical outgrowth of the work he had done as editor of "The Far West and the Rockies Historical Series," published by Arthur H. Clark. He also contributed to World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana, the Dictionary of American History, and the Atlas of American History, as well as to various journals in the field. Hafen served as editor of Colorado Magazine and was a fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters.
LeRoy R. Hafen was a member of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Western Historical Association, the Utah Writers League, the Colorado Authors League, Utah Westerners, and Denver Westerners.
LeRoy R. Hafen was married to Ann Woodbury on September 3, 1915. They had two children - Norma and Karl LeRoy. Ann died in 1970. In a year Hafen married her widowed sister Mary.